Monthly Archive for April, 2015

Before permits have been issued for the Pyhäjoki (Holy River) nuclear power plant in Finland, contractors newly hired for their willingness to proceed nevertheless rushed this month to resume clearing dense forest habitat at Hanhikivi, a remote headlands on the northern Gulf of Bothnia. Anti-nuclear activists from the Rising Tide network were arrested last fall blocking roadwork into the site as the work began, and since then the original contractor refused to continue until a challenge by conservationists and local opponents was resolved.

Activists were already planning a protest camp for the second week of June, but faced with the audacious assault on the environment, they put out the call for immediate help with site occupation, treesits and blockades.

Sixty nuclear abolition activists rallied at the Isaiah Wall near the United Nations on April 27 before marching to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. The group was surprised to discover that police had not barricaded off the sidewalk between the two as part of securing the Mission from any planned demonstration. They walked right up to the main entrance and held a long banner in front of it which read, “Shadows and Ashes: All That Remain”. Some of the group circled around the city block, and sat on the sidewalk in front of the side entrance with signs that read “Sit-In For Survival” and “Abolish All Nuclear Weapons Now”.

The doors were blocked for about half an hour before police moved in to arrest them. Fourteen activists were arrested at the front entrance, and eight were arrested at the side entrance. All 22 were taken to the 17th Precinct station for processing. They were released by 1 p.m. with two “disorderly conduct” summons to appear in court on June 24.

NEW YORK, NY — At the United Nations here this month, talk is focused on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). At about 11 a.m. Apr. 28, I was handcuffed with 21 other nuclear realists after blocking an entrance to the US Mission. I say “realists” because US media won’t pay much attention to US nuclear weapons unless somebody is taken off to a jail.

Barrels of ink are used detailing Iran’s non-existent nuclear arsenal. The US has about 2,000 nuclear weapons ready to launch and used as ticking time bombs every day by presidents the way gunslingers can extort the loot without ever pulling the trigger. Deterrence it is not.

When we were ordered to leave or face arrest, we called ourselves crime-stoppers and asked the officers to arrest the real scofflaws. We were packed into vans and driven to the 17th Precinct. Our band of nuclear abolitionists concluded a long time ago that US nuclear banditry and pollutionism was worth dramatizing for a day, or a month, or a lifetime.

Photo by Guarionex Delgado of arrestees after being released from custody

Sixteen people – including a three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, military veterans and clergy members – were arrested early in the morning of April 28 at the main gate to a drone operations center at Beale Air Force Base in California. Several protestors were in tears as the names and ages of children killed by U.S. drones were read aloud.

All were released, and will be arraigned in U.S. Federal Court on misdemeanor trespassing charges.

Among those arrested was Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly from Chicago, who just finished three months in prison for attempting to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter to the base commander of a drone base in Missouri, asking him to stop piloting lethal drone flights over Afghanistan from within the base.

A man was arrested Saturday in Fukui Prefecture for allegedly flying the drone found earlier this week on the roof of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s official residence, investigators said.
Yasuo Yamamoto, 40, of the city of Obama, presented himself to the Fukui Prefectural Police on Friday evening and said he landed the drone on the rooftop of the prime minister’s office to protest the government’s nuclear energy policy.

Members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR] have been active in challenging U.S. invasions and attacks of Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries. Frequently NCNR members have been arrested, and then in court speak out against such U.S. policies. On May 23, 2013, for example, members of NCNR filed a criminal complaint with the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia against the CIA’s use of drone strikes to assassinate people in various countries, including Pakistan. The citizen activists never received a response.

On March 26, I was in Nevada in my role as event coordinator for Nevada Desert Experience, preparing for the annual Sacred Peace Walk, a 65-mile trek through the desert from Las Vegas to the nuclear Test Site at Mercury, Nevada, an event that NDE has sponsored each spring for about 30 years. Two days before the walk was to begin, a car load of us organizers traced the route.

The last stop but one on the traditional itinerary is the “Peace Camp,” a place in the desert where we usually stay the last night before crossing Highway 95 into what is now known as the Nevada National Security Site. When we got there we were surprised to find the entire camp and the way leading from it to the Test Site surrounded by bright orange plastic snow fencing.

from the National Catholic Reporter by Jack Gilroy | Apr. 18, 2015 Jamesville Correction Facility is just a few miles from Syracuse, N.Y. Syracuse has its own jail, known as the Justice Center. After serving two months at the Jamesville Correction Facility (my crime was attempting to deliver a message to stop the killing from […]

The Storm Is Over by Kathy Kelly April 11, 2015 Lightning flashed across Kentucky skies a few nights ago. “I love storms,” said my roommate, Gypsi, her eyes bright with excitement. Thunder boomed over the Kentucky hills and Atwood Hall, here in Lexington, KY’s federal prison. I fell asleep thinking of the gentle, haunting song […]

The Scrap Trident Coalition has hailed today’s blockade of the UK’s nuclear weapons base at Faslane in Scotland as a huge success after the gates were blocked from 7 am until 13.30 pm and many workers, who had been queued up in buses in nearby Helensburgh, were sent home.

Thirty-four people have been arrested breach of the peace for lying in the gateways, or malicious mischief for painting. At 3pm the protesters still in position relinquished the blockade voluntarily and held a closing ceremony at the base’s north gate.